[Talk-lt] Upgrading E-Roads to trunks

[Albertas Agejevas]

Hi Denis,

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 04:21:31PM +0200, Denis Chapligin wrote:
> Due to newly approved proposal on highway importance russian community
> is discussing new ways of highways tagging. We've agreed that
> international roads like E-roads in Europe and A-roads in Asia should
> be tagged as trunk, ignoring they actual physical conditions, like
> number of lanes etc
>
> I would like to ask you to discuss this issue too, case we have at
> least two E-roads (E77 and E28) coming from Lithuania to Russia, so it
> will be at least strange, if we upgrade those roads to trunk locally,
> in Kaliningrad region, but leave them as primary in Lithuania.
>
> You may join our discussion (russian only) at
> http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=5201 or ask me and i
> will translate.

I am the original author of the current policy on road tagging in
Lithuania (http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Lithuania).  Effectively, now
trunk roads in Lithuania are non-motorway dual carriageway roads
outside cities and important dual carriageway, fast traffic streets in
cities.

In principle I'm not opposed to marking E-roads as trunk.  The
arguments for in in Lithuania would be a more cohesive road network on
low zoom levels.  Another argument would be better harmonisation with
Latvia and Belarus, as well as RF, where a similar policy is already
in place for different reasons.  However by and large Lithuania is
looking towards the West :)  If we look at Poland, they are very fair
in tagging roads as trunk.  Only fast, dual carriageway roads are
marked so there.

On the other hand, I see distinct value in having 'trunk' mean road
condititions, rather than route importance.  There is a distinct
difference between simple, good quality 10 m wide roads such as
A12/E77, fast, dual carriageway roads such as A1 between Vilnius and
Kaunas (almost a motorway, but towing, bycicles allowed, stopping on
the shoulder/emrgency lane is allowed, 100 km/h speed limit), and A1
between Kaunas and Klaipėda (restricted access, 130 km/h motorway).
This distinction would be lost if we tagged all E-roads as trunk.

> PS: i'll be in Vilnius next week, so we may discuss it with help of
> Vilkmergės alus :)

Ooops, too late :)

Albertas